Sharif Digital Repository

The successful design and application of the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) method as a decision-making tool depend on the efficient computation of its order weights. The most popular methods for determining the order weights are the fuzzy linguistic quantifiers approach and the minimal variability method, which give different behavior patterns for the OWA. These two methods will be first analyzed in detail by using sensitivity analysis on the outputs of the OWA with respect to the optimism degree of the decision maker, and then the two methods will be compared. The fuzzy linguistic quantifiers approach gives more information about the behavior of the OWA outputs in comparison to the... 

Extensive low speed wind-tunnel tests were conducted to study the unsteady aerodynamic behaviour of an airfoil sinusoidally oscillating in plunge. The experiments involved measuring the surface pressure distribution over a range of amplitudes, H = ±5 to ±15cm. In addition, steady state data were acquired and were used to furnish a baseline for further analysis and comparison. The model was oscillated with a constant reduced frequency, k = 0.058, at three mean angles of attack of 0°, 10° and 18°. The unsteady aerodynamic loads were calculated from the surface pressure measurements, 64 ports, along the chord for both upper and lower surfaces of the model. The plunging displacements were... 

Optical character recognition of cursive scripts present a number of challenging problems in both segmentation and recognition processes and this attracts many researches in the field of machine learning. This paper presents a novel approach based on a combination of MLP and SVM to design a trainable OCR for Persian/Arabic cursive documents. The implementation results on a comprehensive database show a high degree of accuracy which meets the requirements of commercial use. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005  

The structure, age hardening response, precipitate type and hardness of A319 cast aluminum alloy without and with zirconium addition were investigated. The as-solutionized and artificially-aged hardness values were higher for the Zr-containing alloy. This is believed to be a consequence of the precipitation of Al3Zr particles produced during sufficiently long solutionizing treatments. © 2004 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

A new method for the far field pattern synthesis of parabolic reflector antennas that can virtually optimize all major design parameters simultaneously is presented. This method optimizes the gain and the cross-polarization of the radiation pattern of the reflector antenna. It also satisfies the FCC standard limits on the sidelobe level envelope  

The sensor-source geometry has a significant effect on accuracy of source localization problems. In a sensor placement problem, one attempts to optimally place the sensors in the surveillance area so as to optimize a performance criterion. Sensor placement methods mainly solve the associated problems without taking any specific constraint on permissible location of sensors into account. In practical applications, however, possible location for deployment of the sensors are subject to such limitations as environmental, industrial, and communication constraints, which affects the optimal sensor-source geometry. In this article, we consider the problem of optimal sensor placement, based on time... 

In this article, localization of a maritime target using a passive multistatic radar system, consisting of a single receiver and a number of satellites as its transmitters, is investigated. The set of communication satellites and also the global navigation satellite system (GNSS), including GPS, Glonass, and Galileo, are employed as illuminators of opportunity. In the receiver, the reflected signals from the target along with the direct signal from the satellites are employed to extract a set of bistatic range measurements. Leveraging these measurements and the satellite's position information, a novel localization method considering zero height of maritime target and appropriate combination... 

For several years, a substantial effort has been devoted to the study of 3-D source localization based on 2-D arrays by measuring the well-known azimuth and elevation angles. However, studies on 3-D source localization performed by 1-D arrays are still lacking. Perhaps, the most important drawback in the deployment of a 2-D array structure lies in the fact that it needs a planar space, which might not be available in some applications. This letter concentrates on the problem of 3-D source localization based on 1-D angle measurement provided by a linear array. Different from the traditional 2-D structures where each measurement induces a straight line, each measurement in the 1-D array... 

A safe rehabilitation exercise for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries needs to be compatible with the normal knee arthrokinematics to avoid abnormal loading on the joint structures. The objective of this study was to measure the amount of the anterior tibial translation (ATT) of the ACL-deficient knees during selective open and closed kinetic chain exercises. The intact and injured knees of fourteen male subjects with unilateral ACL injury were imaged using uniplanar fluoroscopy, while the subjects performed forward lunge and unloaded/loaded open kinetic knee extension exercises. The ATTs were measured from fluoroscopic images, as the distance between the tibial and femoral reference... 

In this paper characteristics of a linear, 6H-SiC photoconductive semiconductor switch are presented. The vanadium-doped semi-insulated 6H-SiC PCSS device is designed in a back-triggered, radial switch structure. For this purpose, three-dimensional (3D) device modeling tool was used to model and test the optically initiated 6H-SiC switch. Dark I-V characteristic results show that newly proposed rear-illuminated radial switch structure extends the blocking voltage by reducing the peak electric fields near electrodes. Also this radial structure has higher dark resistance as compared to the previous 6H-SiC PCSS experimental results. The ON-state characteristics of vanadium compensated 6H-SiC... 

Stars twinkle because their light propagates through the atmosphere. The same phenomenon is expected when the light of remote stars crosses a Galactic - disk or halo - refractive medium such as a molecular cloud. We present the promising results of a test performed with the ESO-NTT, and consider its potential  

We investigate the statistical anisotropy and Gaussianity of temperature fluctuations of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe survey, using the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis, Rescaled Range, and Scaled Windowed Variance methods. Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis shows that CMB fluctuations has a long-range correlation function with a multifractal behavior. By comparing the shuffled and surrogate series of CMB data, we conclude that the multifractality nature of the temperature fluctuation of CMB radiation is mainly due to the long-range correlations, and the map is consistent with a Gaussian distribution  

Security techniques have been designed to obtain certain objectives. One of the most important objectives all security mechanisms try to achieve is the availability, which insures that network services are available to various entities in the network when required. But there has not been any certain parameter to measure this objective in network. In this paper we consider availability as a security parameter in ad-hoc networks. However this parameter can be used in other networks as well. We also present the connectivity coefficient of nodes in a network which shows how important is a node in a network and how much damage is caused if a certain node is compromised  

Performance of routing is severely degraded when misbehaving nodes drop packets instead of properly forwarding them. In this paper, we propose a Game-Theoretic Adaptive Multipath Routing (GTAMR) protocol to detect and punish selfish or malicious nodes which try to drop information packets in routing phase and defend against collaborative attacks in which nodes try to disrupt communication or save their power. Our proposed algorithm outranks previous schemes because it is resilient against attacks in which more than one node coordinate their misbehavior and can be used in networks which wireless nodes use directional antennas. We then propose a game theoretic strategy, ERTFT, for nodes to... 

The lipid membranes of living cells form an integral part of biological systems, and the mechanical properties of these membranes play an important role in biophysical investigations. One interesting problem to be evaluated is the effect of protein insertion in one leaflet of a bilayer on the physical properties of lipid membrane. In the present study, an all atom (fine-grained) molecular dynamics simulation is used to investigate the binding of cytotoxin A3 (CTX A3), a cytotoxin from snake venom, to a phosphatidylcholine lipid bilayer. Then, a 5 ms coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation is carried out to compute the pressure tensor, lateral pressure, surface tension, and first moment... 

In this study, we have investigated the bioleaching potential of a native strain of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans isolated from zinc and lead sulfide mines under varied ambient conditions of growth and substrate consumption. The effects of intermittent irrigation, type of agglomeration, feed formulation in terms of acid, enriched salt solution, initial number of microorganism, and their interactions on the bioleaching of low-grade zinc sulfide ores (containing 5.78% zinc) on growth and biooxidation efficiency of the bacteria have been evaluated. Bioleaching capacities of the isolate were optimized by the utilization the Taguchi method (e-qualitic-4) for design of experiments. As a result,... 

Extensive wind tunnel tests were performed on several wing- body-tail combinations in subsonic flow to study the effects of wing geometric parameters on the flow field over the tail. For each configuration, tail surface pressure distribution, as well as the velocity contour at a plane perpendicular to the flow direction behind the wing was measured. The results show a strong effect of wing to tail span ratio, as well as wing aspect ratio, on the flowfield downstream of the wing. For low sweep wings, as those considered here, wing and body interference effects on the tail are associated with the wing tip vortex and nose-body vortex  

Most of the reported robust and non-robust optimization works are formulated based on a single-objective optimization, commonly in terms of net present value. However, variation of economical parameters such as oil price and costs forces such high computational optimization works to regenerate their optimum water injection policies. Furthermore, dynamic optimization strategies of water-flooding often lack robustness to geological uncertainties. This paper presents a multi-objective while robust optimization methodology by incorporating three dedicated objective functions. The goal is to determine optimized and robust water injection policies for all injection wells. It focuses on reducing... 

In this paper, we investigate the statistical and scaling properties of the California earthquakes' inter-events over a period of the recent 40 years. To detect long-term correlations behavior, we apply detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), which can systematically detect and overcome nonstationarities in the data set at all time scales. We calculate for various earthquakes with magnitudes larger than a given M. The results indicate that the Hurst exponent decreases with increasing M; characterized by a Hurst exponent, which is given by, H = 0:34 + 1:53/M, indicating that for events with very large magnitudes M, the Hurst exponent decreases to 0:50, which is for independent events. © Versita...